Chuck Russom

Ariel Gross has been writing some great posts on game audio over at #AltDevBlogADay.  If you are interested in game audio, and you haven’t checked them out, you should do so right away.  I really like his latest post; What Isn’t Sound Design?  Here is an excerpt:

Sound design is not quick work. It doesn’t happen in five minutes. I don’t care what sound I’m making, it could be the sound of a feather landing lightly in a basket of cotton. It doesn’t matter, it’s not going to take me five minutes. It’s probably not going to take me 30 minutes. I might be able to get it done in an hour, but it’s not going to be the best that it can be. Not even close. It’s going to be a rough first pass that may be acceptable to ship if absolutely necessary, but I’ll probably find some time to make it better later. May as well say that it’s going to take at least a couple hours.

He hits it right on the head.  Game Sound Designers are usually asked to perform under unrealistic deadlines.  We’re often asked to deliver 8-10 finished sounds a day. That is a sound or less per hour!  At the same time, the quality is expected to be top notch.  From nothing, through research phase, concept, trying things out, to finished/polished/mastered sound in 40 mins to 1 hour. And it is supposed to be awesome!  Something doesn’t seem right there…  

These expectations are a holdover from the days when “Sound Designers” would just grab a sound from a library, do a quick edit, and then deliver it as a final sound.  We are way beyond that.  Today’s projects require custom sounds, but our schedules rarely allow for this.  How do we educate the people setting the schedules/budgets that this isn’t doable/acceptable anymore?  Anyway, that’s enough from me, go read Ariel’s stuff.

I announced on Twitter that I will permanately shut down Chuck Russom FX on January 18, 2012.  I instantly got overwelmed with messages of support and questions asking why I am shutting it down.  I said I’d write up a blog post to explain.  I’ll make an effort to explain as much as I can and keep the details as brief as possible.  Beyond this post, I’m not really looking to discuss this any further, so please respect that.  Ultimately it is a personal decision and I’ve decided that I no longer want to focus my time and efforts on running the business.  I appreciate everyone’s support over the last 20 months and I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent doing this.

Here are some of my reasons for ending it:

• There are other things that I’d rather spend my free time on.  Chuck Russom Fx operates as a side project and takes up a lot of my time.  Moving forward, there are other side projects that I’d like to focus on.  Something has to give.

• From a business standpoint, Chuck Russom FX is not profitable.  Yes, I bring in money, but if you subtract the true costs of doing business, then I have been running a business that has been losing money for 20 months.  At the same time, sales have been steadily decreasing each month.  How is it losing money?  Am I really personally losing money?  You have to factor overhead (recurring) costs like server fees, accounting costs, legal costs, and other misc costs.  Overhead is pretty low and isn’t the real problem. You also have to consider production costs (costs to make each library).  These costs include; props, equipment purchase/rental, and my time.  I work on a freelance basis, every hour that I spend on a sound library is an hour that I cannot bill to a client project.  I keep track of the hours that I spend on a library and those hours multiplied by my rate become part of the cost of producing a library.  With the exception of my rain and fireworks libraries, I have never broken even on a library (once I factory in the cost of my time).  So that means that nearly every library I’ve produced has lost money.  I accepted that my time investment is a cost of building the business and someday, it will even out.   Some of my libraries are nearly two years old now and still have not turned a profit. Libraries that I have planned for the future will require a greater investment of money and time.  I decided that I can’t produce those libraries at a loss and had to cancel them, especially given the overall decline of sales over the past six months.  When you look at it from a business standpoint, it really doesn’t make sense to keep moving ahead.  The whole point of a business is to cover both your overhead and hard costs and also make money for the time you invest.

• Some people have suggested that I just stop creating new content and leave the site up for people to continue to purchase the old libraries.  To be honest, I could do that.  Monthly overhead is pretty low and it wouldn’t take many sales to break even.  There are a couple issues I have with that. First, without new product releases, monthly sales slow significantly.  That means that most months I would be looking at little to no actual profit once my overhead was covered.  I’m not really interested in running a business that just breaks even.  Second, even without producing new libraries, the business does occupy some of my time.  I have to deal with server and website issues and maintenance, customer service, accounting, and general business planning and management.  I really just need to wipe it all away and not have it occupying my mind so that I can move forward and try new things.

• My main business (my day job) is freelance sound design.  I feel that over the last year my day job has suffered as I focused more time growing Chuck Russom FX. I’m not saying that my work or the quality of my work has suffered.  But I feel I have spent more time promoting the FX business and not enough time promoting my sound design business.  My day job pays the bills, I need to focus much more time on growing my sound design business. I don’t feel I can successfully run both businesses right now, at least not at the level that I require.

That’s the gist of it.  I could have gone into greater detail that might explain the whole story more, but I feel I’m being a lot more open that most businesses ever would be.  I’m not sure that I’m ready to say that I will never again license sound effects or produce sound libraries.  I do enjoy it and if I can find a business model that works for me, I may attempt something again in the future.  But for now, this is the end.  

One thing that really fascinates me about recording sounds (and taking photos) is the ability to capture moment in time which we may never experience again.  I have sounds of buildings while they are being constructed, sounds of my dog who died a few years back, and sounds of my daughter when she was just days old.  

A couple of years ago when my garbage disposal started dying, it made some crazy sounds.  Of course I had to record it!  I’m glad I recorded when I did, because now I’m back to having a fully-functional, boring sounding disposal under my sink.

Working in a creative job is challenging.  You have to be able to create on demand and within a defined amount of time.  I think most will agree that it isn’t always easy to just flip a switch and turn the creativity on.  I’ve discovered that having creative projects outside of your day job are essential to maintaining a creative mindset.

My hobbies have really been fueling my creativity lately.  Spending a lot of my free time working on my photography and music has really inspired my sound design work and I’ve found it much easier to create on demand during my day job.  I started to think about starting up some type of creative side project.  After a lot of thinking, I’ve come up with three that I hope to start next year.  It looks like in 2012 go back to my 2010 ways of never sleeping!

I’m inspired by photographers who do a 365 project, which is where they take a photo and post it every day for a year.  I know that I would not be able to stay committed to that.  I’d probably last a week before giving up.  I am going to try a 52 week project.  Each week, I’ll take a photo and post it here on the blog. It will be interesting to see if I can stay committed to the project for an entire year. It will also be cool to look back over a year and see my (hopeful) growth as a photographer.  I’m starting this project the first week of January.

I also have a music project that I’d like to start up.  I play guitar and drums and write occasional songs, but I never record or play for anyone.  It’s been a great outlet for me and I think it might be time I get back to recording music (it has been many years since I’ve attempted.  I have something in mind that I hope to start up next year.  If past experience is any indication, this project will never see the light of day.  But I’m going to try!

There is a third project I have in mind that I’m not ready to share but I think it will make a nice addition to this blog.  I will be starting on it soon, so watch out.

If you followed my old blog you know that I had posted a lot of sounds that I recorded over the years.  Unfortunately, all of those posts were lost when the blog got deleted.  Luckily, I still have all of the sounds.

From time to time, I will be re-posting some of my favorites.  I’ve been working on a lot of electricity sound design lately and was reminded of the time I recorded Tesla Coils back in 2005.  This is one of my favorite sounds from that session.